What time do pokies have a higher payout rate?

There are a lot of theories out there about how to win at playing poker machines. Some people recommend playing particular games, or in a particular style. Others suggest playing on machines that are “due for a payout” and still others think it will help if they play at a certain time of day or night. While there are legitimate tips out there for increasing your chances of winning at poker machine gaming, for the most part, these strategies are nonsense.

The people that claim that poker machines payout better during the day are probably basing this approach on the fact that if a particular machine has been played all night the previous night without paying out, then it’s “due for a payout”. However, there’s no such thing as a machine that’s due to payout. Every single time a player plays a machine, the odds of him winning are the exact same odds that the last person to play was playing with, and the exact same odds that the next person will be playing with, even if there’s a payout in between. The symbols are generated randomly for each and every spin – the machine does not recollect or factor in previous spins or wins when generating the next spin. There is no such thing as a machine that is due to payout, and machines do not payout better during the day than during the night.

As for those who claim that machines payout better during the night, well there’s a little bit of truth in this, though they’re misinterpreting it. Poker machines don’t payout better during the night time, but they do payout more often. That is, the amount of the payout is not affected by the time of day or night – day time payouts are just as high as night time payouts. However, there are more jackpots hit at night than there are during the day. Why is this? It’s very simple: more people are playing poker machines during the night than during the day. It’s obvious that the more people that are playing, the chances of one of those people hitting the jackpot are greater. Imagine one person playing compared to one thousand people playing. You’d be pretty surprised if not one of those thousand people took some money home, whereas if the single player didn’t take anything home, it wouldn’t be surprising at all. So, yes, it’s true that more poker machines payout during the night time than during the day. But this doesn’t change your odds at all. Your odds remain the same every time you hit ‘play’ – no matter the time of day or night, just the same as it doesn’t matter whether the machine has payed out recently or whether it hasn’t paid out for a long time. Every single spin, the results are randomly generated. So keep this in mind when people give you “old wives tales” for poker machines, and check out of Tips for Winning at Pokies for genuine ways to increase your chances.